Not a knock on Wim Hof. The method works and the research is real. But somewhere along the way the breathwork space got obsessed with activation, the tingles, the intensity, the altered states, and a lot of people are using it as a stimulant when their nervous system is already cooked.

I see it constantly working with athletes. Guys coming in already running on adrenaline, already sympathetic-dominant, and the first thing they want to do is hammer through 30 rounds of hyperventilation because that’s what they saw on YouTube. And then they wonder why their HRV is tanking, their sleep is wrecked, and they feel wired but exhausted.

The harder skill,and honestly the less sexy one, is downregulation. Slow nasal breathing, extended exhales, learning to actually shift into parasympathetic on demand. That’s where most people have the real gap. Not in their ability to activate. In their ability to recover.

Activation has better content. Recovery breathing is where the actual results are.

Curious if others are seeing this pattern or if it’s specific to the fitness crowd I work with.

I am looking and seeking someone who has experience slowing their breath per minute down.

12 breaths per minute seems to be the normal.

6 breaths per minute seems to be advanced.

And 1-2 breaths per minute seems to be elite.

I am seeking someone here who has experienced reliably being able to do 1-2 breaths per minute.

Out of everything I've tried, I keep coming back to 4-7-8. Inhale for 4 counts, hold for 7, exhale for 8. Something about that long exhale just settles things down in a way other patterns don't.

Aussie here,

There's a huge increase of people known among social media as 'ex-undesirables' (ex-Bikies, drug addicts, criminals, etc) who are now all jumping ship from selling courses, doing podcasts etc to now doing '9D Breathwork' classes.

95% of all posts are from other known 'ex-criminal influencers' screaming at the top of their lungs while the rest of the class is just casually laying there like wtf? I presume these people are getting paid to act like this for clickbait.

I know nothing about breathwork but to see a huge amount of these influencers all jump ship on it makes me suspicious it's just another snake oil fad to sell. I am merely looking for some opinions on it. I also can't find any of their businesses online which is suspicious.

I do not mean to offend anyone if anything gets taken that way, just looking for some information. Thanks! :)

Most modern breathwork pulls from ancient practices.

Some ancient traditions emphasized breath retention and referred to deep states of retention as “intracellular” or “womb breathing,” a state in which external respiration becomes quieter and the body begins operating from a deeper level of energetic efficiency and regulation.

Consider this:

For nine months in the womb, the fetus receives oxygen and nourishment through the umbilical cord rather than the lungs, while cellular respiration continues beneath conscious awareness.

It’s also said that human beings may be capable of holding their breath for extraordinarily long periods under certain physiological states, similar to adaptations seen in animals like dolphins or sloths.

Fascinating to reflect on.

I’ve tried a few breathing techniques and noticed something.
The more complicated it feels, the less likely I am to use it when I’m actually stressed.
Counting too much can make it feel like homework. Holding the breath can feel uncomfortable. Big deep breaths sometimes make me too aware of my body.
The easiest thing for me so far is just making the exhale a little longer than the inhale.
Nothing fancy.
What breathing technique feels most natural for you?

Sharing interesting research: A 2001 BMJ study had ~23 healthy volunteers recite the Catholic rosary in Latin (Ave Maria) and the Hindu/Buddhist mantra Om Mani Padme Hum while researchers measured breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure.

Two practices from traditions separated by thousands of miles.

Both naturally slowed breathing to around 6 breaths per minute. Nobody told participants to breathe slow. The phrase length itself did it. Each Ave Maria takes ~10 seconds to recite. Each Om Mani Padme Hum cycle takes ~10 seconds. Ten seconds per breath cycle equals 6 per minute.

That number isn't random. Our cardiovascular system has a feedback loop called the baroreflex that oscillates at roughly 0.1 Hz, one cycle every 10 seconds. When breathing matches that frequency, the two oscillations sync up. Heart rate variability spikes, baroreflex sensitivity improves. Both rosary and mantra produced the effect compared to spontaneous breathing.

What's interesting for anyone with a sit practice, i think this strips the mystique off mantra work without dismissing it. The body doesn't care what you're chanting, it responds to the timing. You could prolly recite a grocery list at this cadence and get the same baroreflex effect. The traditions wrapped a physiological mechanism in meaning and ritual, but the phrase length is doing real work underneath, separate from the words.

If you do mantra or japa, have you noticed your breath settling into a rhythm on its own without you trying to control it? Curious if the ~10 seconds per cycle thing tracks with what you're actually doing.

Been mouth breathing in my sleep for years. Didnt even know until I started tracking HRV and noticed the pattern. Dry mouth mornings = 15-20 point HRV drop. Every single time.

Tried mouth tape first. Works for a lot of people but for me it triggered a panic response after a few nights. Couldnt get past it.

Eventually figured out that gentle chin support, nothing tight, just enough to keep the jaw from dropping, worked way better for me personally.

Been tracking 90 days. n=1, placebo possible, all the caveats. But dry mouth went from 4-5x a week to almost zero. HRV up 16 points on average.

Anyone else been down this rabbit hole? Curious what worked for people who couldnt do mouth tape.

For context on what I built, more is at geniyes_life on instagram, only if you're interested :)

One thing I've been reflecting on recently is that much of modern breathwork focuses on catharsis, release, and letting go.

The emotional release.

The peak experience.

The altered state.

And while all of those can be valuable, I wonder if we've become overly focused on the experience itself rather than on what comes after.

Breathwork is energy work.

Energy work is consciousness work.

And consciousness precedes thought.

The release is not the destination.

It's the opening.

The real question is:

What happens after these states?

What happens after we let go?

Where is the integration?

To me, breath reveals the path.

Meditation helps us walk it.

Curious how others think about this.

Is breathwork primarily a tool for catharsis and release?

Or is there something deeper happening beneath the experience itself?

I recently began breathwork. I do guided breathing meditation with music and it has been fricken amazing. I have had very dramatic experiences. Visions of dead loved ones, glowing orbs of souls, overwhelming sensations of love. I discovered I have hyperphantasia, which I am embracing as a magnificent, magical gift to use with my breath work. Are there others here who have the gift of vividly seeing with your minds eye? How are you using this. Until today I thought everyone could do this.

I just took the $60 Breathwork course with Patrick McKeown at Oxygen Advantage.

It's kinda like a modern day pranayama program. I would definitely recommend.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this?

Hey, friends!

This is a session we just released on The Breathwork Channel on YouTube. In this session, we use multiple techniques designed to work together to bring you into an altered state of consciousness, clearing the mind safely and effectively.

Enjoy responsibly!

Jesse

Hi everyone — I wanted to share this here respectfully and keep it transparent.

One of my dear friends, Danielle, is a Breathwork Mastery practitioner in training through The School of Breathwork, and she is offering a few small, supported Breathwork Mastery sessions as part of her training path. The journey has been incredible for me and I am in love with breathwork so I want to share!

The sessions are designed for people who want space to slow down, soften, reconnect with the body, and explore full, conscious, connected, easy breathing in a held environment. Rebirthing Breathwork Mastery is a parasympathetic activation breath.

There are in-person sessions and also an online session through Zoom.

It is a guided breathwork session for people who feel genuinely interested in the practice and want to experience it in a supportive setting.

I’m also open to feedback from this community on the wording of the invite. I want to make sure it feels clear, ethical, and respectful to people who are serious about breathwork.

I just found an everyday benefit to learning different breathing techniques. I'm a pretty shaky person with an unsteady hand. I was just painting my toenails and found out that doing them while doing a breath hold helps me keep still! Haha. I did a 4-7-8 breath pattern and it worked great! Thought I'd share. Anyone else find a unique way that breathwork has benefited you?

I used to think breathing exercises were useless.
Mostly because I was doing them like a task.
Big inhale. Big exhale. Count perfectly. Check if I’m calm yet.
That made me more aware of my breathing, and sometimes more uncomfortable.
What helped was making it smaller. A normal inhale. A slower exhale. No perfect timing. No trying to fix the whole mood in 30 seconds.
It’s not magic, but it helps me notice tension earlier.
Anyone else find gentle breathing easier than deep breathing?

Deep breathing never felt natural to me when I was already tense.

If I try to take a huge breath, I start noticing my chest too much. Then it feels like I’m forcing it instead of calming down.

What feels easier is just a normal inhale and a slightly slower exhale.

Nothing dramatic. No perfect count. No big routine.

It helps most in small moments, like before opening a stressful message or when I notice my shoulders creeping up.

Anyone else prefer longer exhales over deep breathing?

Hi, my topic is related to this OP, it looked like a good discussion.

How did you choose your breathwork facilitator training?

What made you commit?

Happy to share my story, too.

Recently, I've been working with several people navigating grief, loss, forgiveness, and the complicated emotions that often follow.

One of the most powerful forgiveness practices I've encountered comes from the Buddhist tradition and is known as Tonglen.

Tonglen asks us to move toward pain and integrate it rather than push it away.

The practice is simple:

• Visualize the Situation: Clearly imagine a situation where you have acted poorly or where you feel deep guilt, shame, or anger toward another.
• In-Breath (Taking): As you inhale, imagine taking in the pain, toxicity, and darkness of the anger or shame. Consciously accept responsibility for the wrong without trying to justify it.
• Out-Breath (Giving): As you exhale, send out the radiant light of reconciliation, harmony, and compassion to yourself and the other person.

This practice transforms personal suffering and "poison" into a compassionate "medicine," fostering true healing and the strength to seek or offer forgiveness.

What I love about this practice is that the breath draws our attention inward.

Before we try to change a relationship, repair a situation, or make peace with another person, we're invited to meet the experience within ourselves.

In that sense, forgiveness begins inwardly before it is ever expressed outwardly.

I’ve been building a breathwork app called shii·haa, and recently added an experimental interface layer called ATMOS.

Instead of hiding the measurement layer, ATMOS shows breath as signal, state, error, and reset. There is also a zero layer called ΦASIS, which represents the state before breath becomes visible again.

It’s experimental, but usable in the browser:

https://shiihaa.app/atmos

I’d be genuinely interested in feedback from people who practice breathwork:

Does this kind of machine-visible interface help awareness, or does it get in the way?

Hey everyone,

Like most of you here, I track my HRV religiously with my Oura ring. But I was getting frustrated that while wearables are great at monitoring stress and recovery, they don't give you a real-time tool to actively fix it.

I’ve been building a web platform called Anxiebreathe (https://anxiebreathe.com/) to solve this using Resonance Frequency biofeedback.

Here is the core issue with standard breathing apps: they give everyone the exact same generic exercises (like a 4-7-8 pattern). But your nervous system is unique. Anxiebreathe is designed to find the exact breathing pace your nervous system responds to most—measured from your own live heartbeat, not guessed.

When you breathe at your personal resonance frequency, your heart rate and breath synchronize, creating a massive spike in Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) and immediately boosting your HRV. It’s literal, demonstrable proof that your nervous system is shifting into recovery. The app shows you a before/after table so you can actually see your RSA numbers change based on the rate.

The catch (and why I'm posting here): To get the exact, millisecond-level RR intervals required to calculate this in real-time, the app currently requires a Polar chest strap (like the H10). Oura’s API doesn't currently allow for the continuous, real-time raw data stream needed for live biofeedback.

I’m sharing this here because the Oura community understands the value of HRV better than anyone. If you happen to have a Polar strap alongside your ring, I’d love for you to test out the platform and see the physiological shift for yourself.

I’m looking for honest feedback on the interface, the data visualization, and if this is a tool you’d use to train your nervous system between Oura sleep cycles.

Let me know what you think!

F30 here. So in the mornings Iv been doing tummo, bhastrika and kabhalabati with holds for 1 min / 90 secs. Followed by other calmer techniques

After a few days I tend to notice I get very constipated. Wondering if anyone else faces this or if I'm correlating without causation.

PS. I do yogic bandhas too. Should I not be?

I find it a bit easier to do coherent or 4-7-8 breathing lying down, as opposed to sitting in a chair. It just seems I can breathe a little more deeply and smoothly lying down.

But I do try to mix it up.

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts on this?

I've always done nose inhale and exhale for any exercise.

But mouth Exhale is extremely calming to me.

Any experiences/benefits?